Water & Wastewater Treatment

High quality solutions for all municipal and industrial waste water needs. Large and diverse product range which includes inlet screens, screenings handling, storm screens, sludge thickening and dewatering, grit removal and washing, tertiary treatment plus many more. Customised solutions including design, manufacture, installation, commissioning and after sales service. 27 March 2014 Water & Wastewater Treatment wwtonline.co.uk awards T he importance of technological innovation in the water industry is reflected by the inclusion of two categories in the Water Industry Achievement Awards. Both are coveted by a range of industry players, from tiny start-ups – through to global engineering companies and utilities serving millions of customers. Leakage and network management technologies are strongly represented in this year's entries, perhaps reflecting utilities' response to their customers' priorities. k Most Innovative Use of an Existing Technology aerial photography spots rural leaks APEM has used digital aerial surveys and analysis to survey large rural areas to identify the precise location of buried pipes and to find leaks. Working with United Utilities (UU), the company has used a variety of airbourne sensors to produce high resolution visible light, infrared and thermal infrared images in a combination and application that is new. air-pigging cleans longer pipe lengths Contractor Balfour Beatty (BB) has worked closely with Yorkshire Water and specialist supplier HTC to successfully implement the 'air pigging' process in the Yorkshire region. The technique uses air, rather than water, to push swabs along a main for cleaning, saving on water use and wastewater disposal. BB says the technique is faster and allows longer pipe lengths to be cleaned, requiring fewer excavations. Treatment trio saves on space The installation of three treatment technologies not previously used in combination in the UK has taken place at Severn Trent Water's Stoke Bardolph sewage treatment plant in Nottingham. The dewatering liquors from the sludge digestion process at Stoke Bardolph are initially treated in a Phospaq phosphorous removal reactor. A trade waste stream coming into the works from a rendering plant, which has a significant nutrient loading, is undergoes its first treatment in a Biopaq UASB+ reactor for biogas production. The two streams are then combined and treated in an ammonia Amammox reactor. Pressure trials reduce leakage loss Trials carried out at Northumbrian Water Group with IVL Flow Control have produced a control mechanism which attains efficient pressure reduction, in conjunction with minimised levels Judges for 2014 were: Steve Kaye, Anglian Water; Mark Smith, WRc; Fiona Griffith, Isle Utilities; Mick Ciotkowski, Technology Strategy Board. of leakage, in both strategic trunk and local distribution mains. The feedback control system developed for this project produces a network with a stable hydraulic contour and a smooth pressure distribution profile. aPC used to manage compliance A project carried out by Perceptive Engineering for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water shows how the use of advanced process control (APC) in a wastewater treatment process can improve environmental compliance, while also reducing energy consumption. Rather than control a fixed dissolved oxygen (DO) setpoint, a control system was used to vary the DO setpoint to achieve an ammonia output level using multi-variate model predictive control. A statistical model could then be built showing how all variables affected others over time. For example, if DO in one lane needs to be increased, the valve position will change, decreasing the air flow in the other lanes. k Most Innovative New Technology of the Year Bringing infrastructure to life In November 2013, Atkins' Dynamic Objects augmented reality interface (ARI) became available, having been trialled with Scottish Water, United Utilities, NI Water and Wessex Water. The engineering consultancy says it enables users to bring 2D drawings to life on their desktop and to fully understand infrastructure constructability issues at concept phase. A 3D holographic-style image is viewable through the user's iPad and iPhone. These images can be overlaid by services information, land plans, or exported to Google Earth to aid development of solutions and test impacts on customers. Leak correlator effective on plastic pipes Severn Trent Water has developed LeakFinder, a leak-noise correlator which is just as effective on plastic as metallic pipes. The utility, which has worked in partnership with Loughborough University and Echologics on the Technology Strategy Board supported project, says there are four innovations that have made the new correlator effective on plastic pipes: These include sensors with a low noise floor and high output in the low frequency range , a method to automatically calculate the velocity of the sound waves, signal processing to analyse low frequencies and electronics with a lower noise floor to allow for the detection of low amplitude signals. dTs system identifies flood source In 2013, Royal HaskoningDHV and Anglian Water identified an opportunity to pioneer distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technology at a site which had suffered from sewer and property flooding. The project team deployed fibre-optic cables into two sewers and monitored the system for four weeks. DTS was able to identify the source of the flooding and under what conditions the relevant pump station was failing. The results enabled Anglian Water to make an informed business case, targeting the source of issues within the water system, rather than the symptoms. The system was found to be 37% more effective then CCTV. real-time recognition of network incidents UU has worked with the University of Exeter on the development of an event recognition system (ERS) for spotting pipe bursts, equipment failures and abnormal water consumptions that may result in customers experiencing loss of supply, low pressure or discolouration. The ERS makes use of a range of artificial intelligence and other advanced data analysis techniques, including wavelets, artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms. UU says it enables timely and reliable event detection and approximate location and diagnosis. It has predictive and proactive capability, helping to minimise incidents in the network and their impact on customers. nnn Airbourne photography has helped United Utilities spot leaks Innovation focus

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